As the margin pressure mounts on automobile dealerships, promoters are carving out innovative opportunities to stay afloat. Sandeep Kher is one such dealer who has been successful in breaking the traditional source of income. Now his dealership, Koncept Automobiles, makes 40 per cent of its total revenue by selling insurance and auto loans.

In an interview to Nabeel A Khan the managing director of Hyundai Motor India says the market growth will slow to 7-9% in fiscal 2018 as a result of the initial impact of GST, which though will be beneficial to the industry in the long term

Globally, the carmaker has sold 8.8 million units of Verna across 66 countries. The new Verna comes with super body structure built with 50% advanced high strength steel making it more sturdy and rigid.

Kia in April announced that it would invest $1.1 billion to build a factory in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district. The additional investment will be to create the supplier base, said Tae-Hyun Oh, the chief operating officer of its international business division. Marketing budget will be outside of this, he told ETAuto.

Auto industry executives said they may have to re-evaluate their business plans, including on local manufacturing, because of the sudden change in the tax structure. This would also hurt growth in an industry that was hoping to post double-digit expansion, though there could be some buying in the next few days before the change is implemented, they said.

Maruti dealers are calling customers to get their SmartPlay infotainment system updated with Android Auto. The new Dzire and the Ignis already comes with the feature, while the older version in the Ciaz, S-Cross, Vitara Brezza, Ertiga and the Baleno used to come with only Apple CarPlay.

Country's largest passenger vehicle maker, Maruti Suzuki and the Japanese carmaker Honda Cars India were the only two carmakers which registered a positive growth. The biggest losers Toyota, Renault and Ford saw a decline of more than 30 percent.

Dheeraj Hinduja, chairman at India’s second largest truck maker Ashok Leyland, prefers a low profile, but with managing director Vinod Dasari leaving at the end of the month, he says he’s become more “hands-on”.